That was when I turned to the clubs. To find brotherhood. To find family.
So I had no one outside of the clubs.
The last club I’d belonged to had been taken out by a rival while I’d been locked up.
And while I was sure some of the guys had managed to get away, or recover in a hospital after the attacks, I really doubted anyone would be that keen to seek me out after so long.
It wasn’t outside the realm of possibilities, but it just didn’t seem likely.
“Yeah. Brooks sent me to get you,” he added, letting out a barely-there sigh, and it was right then that I realized his eyes were heavy-lidded, and he’d changed into sweats and a tee. Like he’d left the gym to go to bed after being up all night.
But, yeah, Brooks didn’t give a shit about that.
If he wanted someone to do something, he was calling one of the prospects. It didn’t matter if it was to run an errand or to open a jar of pickles. That was the kind of boss he was.
And, typically, Voss took it with a grain of salt, doing a lot less grumbling than Valen, who’d been raised in the club, and was finding it a bit more difficult to adjust to being one of the lowest men on the totem pole after he’d been away, driving across country for years.
Clearly, though, after two fucks and one long gym workout during an all-nighter, Voss wasn’t feeling as go-with-the-flow as usual about Brooks’s constant orders.
“Who is it? Did he have a cut on?”
“Not a he.”
“What?” I asked, sure I misheard him because of his grumbly voice.
“It’s a chick.”
“A chick,” I repeated, mentally trying to run through any possible women who would come see me at the club. Maybe a casual one-night-stand who wanted another round? Still, that seemed kind of strange that they would show up so early in the morning.
“Relax,” Voss, said, smirking, “she didn’t look knocked up.”
Christ, that hadn’t even occurred to me.
I mean, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibilities. But the idea filled me with instant dread. I had nothing against kids. I was just too old to be taking one of them on full-time. I liked being a club uncle instead. Give some wisdom, toss a ball around, let the girls paint my face and fuck with my hair, then send them right on home with their parents to disrupt their sleep and spread sticky shit all over their possessions.
“Who’d she say she was?” I asked, all the names of my recent conquests at the ready. If there were two pink lines to think about, I hoped against hope that the mother would be one of the more sensible women I’d screwed around with, and not some random clubwhore.
“Abs?” Voss said, face scrunching.
Abs.
That didn’t ring a bell.
“What did she look like?”
“Pretty. Thin. Dark hair cut to about here,” he said, motioning just above his shoulders. “Kinda gray eyes.”
“I have no idea who the fuck that is,” I said, shaking my head.
“Dunno either. But she knows you. And she said she couldn’t leave until she talked to you. For what it’s worth, chick seemed freaked the fuck out. Not in a ‘bun in the oven, the fuck am I gonna do now’ sort of way. But in a kicked-dog sort of way. Jumpy, looking over her shoulder a lot.”
“Alright. I’ll just round up Dez…” I started, looking around, but not seeing him anywhere.
“Juice chick took him into the back. He can hoof it home,” Voss said, already turning to walk away.
Normally, I wouldn’t leave someone stranded without a ride. But we weren’t that far from the clubhouse. And Dezi didn’t exactly get much of a workout in, so the walk could be his punishment for fucking around.
Besides, I was too curious to waste anymore time.
I didn’t know who this Abs woman was, but I wanted to find out.
CHAPTER THREE
Cary
I rolled up to the clubhouse less than ten minutes later.
Voss was already there, parked, and gone. Likely to seek out his bed before Brooks decided to shackle him with another task.
One look around said there were no unfamiliar cars around. So, what? She’d walked? Weird, but okay. Just another piece to the puzzle.
I’d spent the whole ride back flipping through mental images of women I’d known over the years, but I hadn’t come up with a single woman who’d fit the description Voss had given me.
That said, women changed up their looks all the time. So the hair could be a fluke. But gray eyes? That didn’t ring any bells. That wasn’t a color you saw every day.
Curiosity more than piqued—even if I was dealing with a little bit of uncharacteristic anxiety about the whole possibility that she might be a pregnant former fling—I made my way out of the SUV, a little self-conscious that I hadn’t taken the extra couple of minutes for a shower, so I could look more put together.
The “kids” teased me about the fact that I made sure I was presentable. While Dezi’s ‘don’t give a fuck/ I forgot to put a shirt on under my cut’ look was charming for his age, I didn’t think that shit would be quite as accepted on me. So I shaped up my beard. I slicked back my hair. I put a little time and care into my outfits.
I figured older could just be older, or it could be distinguished.
I chose distinguished.
There was nothing to be done about my workout pants and black ribbed tank right then, though, so I just went with it. Though I maybe made sure to rake my hair back away from my forehead before I reached for the doorknob.
The door was silent, so the woman who was standing with her back to me didn’t immediately know I had moved inside, giving me a chance to look her over.
Voss was right; she didn’t look pregnant.
In fact, she looked so rail fucking thin that her body probably couldn’t support a pregnancy. It was a little cold still in Jersey for her shorts, and they put these long, spindly legs on display. So small, in fact, that her kneecaps jutted out on the insides and her thighs didn’t meet anywhere.
I was not a super picky man when it came to women’s body types. I liked someone I could connect with, have some fun with, before it got physical. Which was always more important than just being some physical “ideal.” But I couldn’t say I’d ever been with a woman who looked like she was starving herself. That wasn’t a turn on at all.
Taking a deep breath as the mystery got more and more interesting, I closed the door behind me.
Again, like Voss said, she was jumpy.
And not even just ‘I’m in an outlaw biker compound’ jumpy.
Her whole body jolted as she whipped around to face me, her hands immediately wrapping around herself.
Jumpy like a kicked-dog.
That was accurate.
I didn’t know the situation, of course, but if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on her having some sort of abusive ex-hole in her past.
“Oh, wow,” she said, shaking her head a little as she looked at me. Almost as if I wasn’t what she’d been expecting. Which was weird since she’d sought me out. “It’s you,” she added in her honey-sweet voice.
And I had nothing.
Not even being face-to-face with her.
I was coming up blank.